Things aren't going well for Sony, as the company is struggling in multiple market segments to compete. The company has seen its profits slump and recently posted its eighth consecutive quarterly loss. Sony was also forced to cut sales targets for its TVs, gaming devices, and digital cameras as demand continues to weaken.

Sony has resorted to selling some of the property it owns in order to improve cash flow. In January, Sony sold its New York headquarters for $1.1 billion.

However, the sale of that headquarters didn't stop Sony from posting a loss of $1.73 billion for the quarter that ended in December. Sony blamed some of the loss on slumping TV sales that have plagued some of its competitors including Sharp and Panasonic.

While Sony posted a loss for the quarter, the company still forecasts full-year net income of $213 million. Sony is also cutting 10,000 jobs, which should help push it towards probability.

“Sony is supposed to sell strong products that aren’t reliant on currency swings,” said Yuuki Sakurai, president of Fukoku Capital Management Inc. “We need to see those products before we’ll invest in Sony again.”

Sony also reduced its forecast for sales of portable game devices for its year ending March to 7 million units from the 10 million units it predicted just three months ago. In addition, Sony is reportedly looking at selling more land, buildings, businesses, and security holdings.

I think it's high time that Sony & MS bury the hatchet, kiss and make up. Granted, all 3 console MFG's have been taking hits recently (which precludes tracing trends about any particular one of them). The difference is that MS & Sony have been barely scraping by on their costs in the console market.

Now maybe it's just me, but I've never liked MS produced hardware. RROD and overpriced tablets with abysmal battery life notwithstanding, I simply feel that MS does much better when it focuses solely on software. Conversely, I think Sony does better with hardware. There was no logical reason to migrate from the popular PS2 programming format to the labyrinthine PS3 format; and developers hated them for it. MS has more games in its content vault. Sony has more media content in its. HD-DVD died. MS has a better online gaming service. Etc, etc, etc.

Rather than bickering between themselves, these companies could come together and generate more profit for both via greater combined console penetration, and more attached game sales (since consumers won't be forced to choose between popular "exclusive" titles on one or the other).

As I see it, with consoles nearly in line with PC programming standards, it's going to be harder and harder to generate a compelling reason to own a console--versus even a mainstream PC (something that can do much more than a lowly console). This is especially true when consoles creep to the $500 range (like the PS3 has). MS should stick to DX improvements and making sure win9 doesn't suck. Sony should stick to building a console that's super-easy to program for & doesn't break the bank. Then it'll be win-win.